Pages

Wednesday, January 9, 2013

#52: When Good Plots Go Bad: How “Those Who Came Before” Ruined Assassin's Creed

(A
SPOILER WARNING is in effect for the entity of Assassin's Creed from
the first game to the most recent outing. YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED!)

A week
ago, a friend of mine finished playing Assassin's Creed 3, which
sparked a pretty interesting discussion regarding the plot of the
franchise and its somewhat controversial ending. While we were
talking, I had made the statement that the inclusion of “Those Who
Came Before” (which I will be abbreviating to TWCB) and the
destruction of the entire world was the beginning of the end for the
franchise's main plot. That is a fairly bold statement to make
without providing proof, since it became a major element of the story from the second game onward, so this week's article is my defense of
that claim. While I have addressed this series severaltimes
in the past,
this is the first time I have discussed the larger over-arching story
of the whole thing. I am going to assume at this point that you have
at least a passing familiarity with the franchise. If you do not,
please cease to read on if you are afraid of spoilers. This is going to
contain a few of them. Anyway, the inclusion of TWCB/Apocalypse plot
had a number of after-effects on the main plot that, taken as a
whole, really restricted what they could otherwise do with it, which
severely damaged the franchise.

The
first of these after-effects is that Assassin's Creed began to move
away from the Templars vs. Assassins plot and towards this new Mayan
Apocalypse plot. It is a very subtle shift that one may not notice
unless they look closely. In the first game and second Assassin's
Creed games, the war between the Assassins and the Templars was the
central guiding element of the plot and everything that happened was
in service to that. In Assassin's Creed, the conflict and the
morally/intrigue behind it was introduced. In the sequel, the war was
further elaborated on both through the main story and Subject 16's
recordings. Also, Desmond was being trained (via the Animus) to take
part in it as an active participant. As we progress forward from
here, we see that there is a subtle shift in how the plot begins to
unfold. Instead, the main story begins to unfold around the impending
apocalypse, which becomes the new driving force for the plot. For the
events of Brotherhood, Desmond needs to find the Apple of Eden in
order to learn what he needs to do to stop the apocalypse. During
Revelations, our protagonist needs to wake up so that he can do what
needs to be done. Lastly, in the most recent outing, the reason
Desmond goes back into the Animus is to find the key to the ancient
temple that contains the device capable of saving the world. Instead
of the Assassins vs. Templar plot being the highest priority, the
sub-plot of TWCB and their efforts to stop the world from being
burned is at the forefront of the player's mind. Considering that the
former and its moral ambiguity is at the center of what is
interesting about the franchise, it is a bit of a mistake.

But this
was not the only problem with the “end of the world” storyline.
Another major issue invited by it is that it an even larger focus was
placed on the present-day storyline that is set in 2012, stealing
momentum from the story-lines of the ancestors in their periods of
history. Again, this is antithetical to the strengths of the
franchise. The other big draw of Assassin's Creed is that the Animus,
the game's signature plot device, allows the writers to explore any
period of history they choose. This has led to quite a few
interesting, and relatively unused, settings being highlighted in the
franchise from the Third Crusade, to the Italian Renaissance, and
even the American Revolution. Many people come to the franchise
specifically for this reason. Shifting the focus away from this and
over to a grand, world-spanning apocalypse plot is a grave mistake as
it takes away from what makes the game shine. In the original game
and it's successor, the focus was squarely on the ancestors
presented. While Desmond was there and he had an outside motivation
for going through his ancestors' memories (and a debatably large
amount of screen time), the real star was the ancestor presented, be
it Altair or Ezio. Moving on past that point, Desmond and the
modern day story surrounding him became much more important.
Brotherhood allowed made him more involved, giving him several
segments outside the Animus and giving the assassin crew a bit more
of a showing, allowing players to interact with them and get to know
them better. The entire point of Revelations was to get Desmond back
into the real world after the plot twist of Brotherhood literally
sent him into a coma. In that game, there is a whole five part side
mission dedicated to Mr. Miles and getting to know him better.
Lastly, the third main game had entire sections where Desmond used
stealth to get around the real world and find artifacts that would
prove useful to the main plot. The problem with all of this is that
the real world/present day story have always been the weakest part of
Assassin's Creed. As a character, Desmond has always been as bland as
a leading man can get. Ubisoft tried to make him an “everyman”
that people can relate to, but as a result he does not have anything
that distinguishes him from any other protagonist. This is a problem
that the series is notorious for and has been since the beginning. So
to make a plot twist that would throw that element into the limelight
seems like a very poor decision. Because someone needs to deal with
the apocalypse in the modern day story, they were forced to make it
more important instead of just regulating it to the side-lines as a
vague justification for going through an ancestor's memory.

Lastly,
one of the biggest problems with the inclusion of TWCB is that it
codified the legendary “mind fuck” endings that the series would
grow to be known for. The first game ended on a fairly surprising
note with Desmond discovering that his room was covered in hidden
symbols he could only see with Eagle Vision. This led to a number of
fans speculating and trying to decipher what those symbols might mean
for the lore of the series. It was an odd and surprising “WTF”
ending, but it was not entirely out of place for the game as we knew
it. When Assassin's Creed 2 introduced its plot twist at the end,
that TWCB created humanity, but died in a solar flare that now
threatens to come back, it came entirely out of left field and no one
saw it coming. This set the trend going forward into Brotherhood with
the death of Lucy, who was secretly a triple agent, joining the
Templars after being sent to spy on them and then reintegrating
herself into the Assassin order. Revelations would try for this with
Altair's, Ezio's, and Desmond's stories, with Altair sealing himself
and his Apple of Eden into a secret library and Ezio talking to
Desmond directly in order for a member of the First Civilization to
tell him about the apocalypse, but in general they did not elicit
many strong reactions. And in the third main installment in the
series, the plot twist was something that players could partly see
coming and partly felt like it came from nowhere. As the game
foreshadowed, Roman goddess Juno was planning to backstab the human
race and Desmond decided triggering her trap was worth keeping the
world intact. Every game past the second tried for a “mind screw”
ending and for the most part failed. The whole concept of TWCB drove
most of these plot twists and gave them fuel. Without this element,
it seems less likely, though still entirely possible, that similar
twists would have happened.

Ultimately,
the inclusion of this one, singular element really derailed what
could have an interesting game about a world-spanning, secret war
between two shadow organizations with ambiguous stances on morality.
Instead, it changed the franchise into an entirely different
science-fiction apocalypse plot that seemed wildly divergent from its
roots. As someone who is a massive fan of the series, it is
perplexing to see how different it turned out from anything that
could have possibly been predicted based on the original game. Truly,
the game moved so far from what it originally promised that it can
sometimes be hard to believe. It seems to have evolved and lost
itself as it progressed. I admit that I am curious as to exactly how
this happened...

A while back, I started getting spam posts that would appear and legitimate posts somehow being marked as spam by Google. In order to crack down, I switched to this style as an experiment. If this gets old, I'll likely switch to the other way.

Can't you get an automatic spam filter on Blogspot blogs? Because let me tell you: looking at what my site's spam filter blocks over the course of a week is enough to send me spiraling into a massive panic attack.

Yeah. Like I've said in the past, I couldn't care less about Desmond's modern-day plot. It just felt so contrived I guess. I'd thought something like the ending was going to happen, and I definitely wasn't surprised. The Juno/Minerva conflict just feels dumb too. I'm just glad Haytham was in AC3, or the only decent reason to play that game would have been the tree-running (AKA the only mechanic they really got right)

The series has always been its most interesting when it's talking about the morality of the two sides and how they've manipulated history, and TWCB... well, they're prehistory. It IS somewhat interesting how they're tied to mythology, but I don't think that's ever brought up again after AC2.

6th line I think it's 'story' rather than 'store'. Mentioning it because I like the phonetic typo =D

It's sad the story is going awry, particularly the twist endings (Didn't they learn the lessons of M. Knight ShamalayanÄs career spin?) . Also kinda sounds that maybe they didn't really have a plan of where they were going with this...